Pedro Castillo – the president of Peru that the world knew a little over a year ago through the photos of Morgana Vargas Llosa and other reports, where the idyll of the rural school teacher who grazed his cattle and who shared caldo verde with his family in Chota, with the politician who crammed hills in Juliaca, has already denied several times the word he had pledged as a candidate. Nothing remains of the figure of the innocent messiah and Promethean reformer. He has become (perhaps always was) a traditional politician who has quickly copied the old tricks that he denounced so much, but without any camouflage that hides the accelerated decomposition of his regime and without credible alibis that explain the decadence of the.
The scandals of corruption and ineptitude that have surrounded President Castillo’s family and friends’ politburo have exploded publicly and are piling up relentlessly: the Casa del Pasaje Sarratea, the former presidential secretary Bruno Pacheco, the former minister Juan Silva, the Puente Tarata case, the plagiarism academic of his master’s thesis, the businessman Zamir Villaverde, his sister-in-law Yenifer Paredes among many others. His impudence can only be overcome by the self-confidence and silence with which he faces the accusations.
Words, words, just words
The Citizen Proclamation that Pedro Castillo signed before some civil organizations in the middle of the electoral campaign, has become one of the many commitments that he has broken, his promises of respect for the investigative work of the police and the prosecutors have been forgotten. As many of his former Ministers of the Interior have denounced, Pedro Castillo has not only interfered in the appointment and removal of police chiefs and prosecutors, but has also chosen to protect a decadent and increasingly shameless leadership of power, which has become entrenched and it comes continually destroying every corner of the incipient meritocracy that inhabited the Peruvian State, to replace them with insignificant villains.
the keepers of the ice
The appointment as Minister of State is the highest dignity within the public service, and although, for several years, there has been a deterioration in the professional and moral qualities of the ministers, it is difficult to find casts more disastrous than those chosen by Castillo in his first year. From the beginning of his administration, the improvisation in the appointment of his ministers announced not only a chaotic government but one crammed with ineptitude and schedules. His first cabinet was sworn in incomplete because he belatedly convinced his economy minister and justice minister (the now ineffable and immovable Aníbal Torres). More than 50 ministers have alternated in power and Peru has become the country in the region with the least stability as Minister of State. Less stability and greater informality as well, because there have even been ministers like Juan Cadillo (former minister of education) who have been asked to resign by text message. A leftist politician firing by text message, job insecurity who knows you.
The most troubled ministry has been that of the Interior, where seven ministers have passed in less than a year. In this way it is impossible to fight organized crime, perhaps because the president is very little interested in this fight that affects his closest family environment. Castillo’s ministers are the guardians of the ice that melts in the middle of the land, as in José Watanabe’s poem: “you cannot love what escapes so quickly”. And Pedro Castillo’s ministers escape very quickly, unless Juan Silva, the ousted former minister of transportation and communications, who gave up having a police escort to escape under the president’s nose while being fired to mariachi music by some workers from the It was his ministry. A cheap comedy.
critical accompaniment
So many things have happened that we have already forgotten about the ridiculous talk of Guido Bellido, the minister who rode into Chumbivilcas on horseback and ended up under the wheels; or that there was a certain Héctor Valer who came to Congress with the vote of the radical right and who became president of the Council of Ministers for only three days, having to resign when allegations of family violence from his past were uncovered, quickly surpassing the ineffable Ántero Flores Aráoz, premiere of Manuel Merino.
All the ministers are fleeting and precarious holders except for Dina Boluarte (who would assume the position if Castillo were vacated, but who has remained silent for many months), Geiner Alvarado and Roberto Sánchez. Sánchez is the head of the Ministry of Foreign Trade, and the only survivor of Castillo’s alliance with another movement of the Peruvian left: Together for Peru. All the others have been decimated. In particular, the ministers of the progressive left such as Pedro Francke or Hernando Cevallos. From the image where Cevallos and Francke flanked Pedro Castillo right and left on the balcony after the election results, nothing remains but the longing for a utopian project of programmatic unity. It’s yesterday’s newspaper. The Castillo government has exposed the inconsistencies and inconsistencies of the Lima progressive left that has ended up imploding at the point of communiqués, tantrums and resignations like that of Anahí Durand who preferred to remain tied to the Castillo regime to surely give the internal battle, rather than lead the embryonic movement that helped to gestate with the name of New Peru. Marx, but Groucho. Nothing should surprise us anymore from those who have asked to avoid a coup, by carrying out another coup.
In the distribution, discipline comrades
President Castillo’s relations with the Legislature have survived two vacancy requests. A constitutional accusation remains. The votes of the left-wing caucuses and of some other congressmen from other parties accused of receiving undue benefits from the government, have allowed Castillo – scorched, yes – to continue serving as president. The official caucus has been divided like any Peruvian caucus, but it has played against the wall with other caucuses when it has tried to embezzle some successful reforms, some sense of order, such as the one achieved with the university reform and the National Superintendence that regulates it. or the prohibition of informal public transport.
The programmatic unity between Legislative and Executive is separated from the common good. They have only collaborated in the approval of a few legislative initiatives that came from the Ministry of Economy and Finance. Some taxes have been allowed to be exempted (a measure that some discuss if it was convenient) a measure that will have an impact on the fiscal box of the future, perhaps pressured by the rise in the cost of food and fuel, but, if the fall in the price of copper is considered (from which one of Peru’s largest tax revenues comes), would only be putting future governments in trouble. Perhaps only the appointment of the Board of Directors of the Central Reserve Bank of Peru was exempt from controversy, perhaps because in Peru there is still a collective conscience that responds reactionarily to the trauma of the 1980s and that allows us to play with everything except macroeconomic stability and Julio Velard.
The doorman without keys and the populist without a town
The head of the party that was in power until before the resignation of Pedro Castillo in June 2022, Peru Libre, the feverish ideological agent Vladimir Cerrón, who is one of those who still takes out his umbrella when it rains in Moscow, has lost a lot of influence and his power grabs are just unhinged Twitter rants or TV invectives against Yankee imperialism. His original plan has been abandoned because despite the fact that he insists on fabricating the constituent moment, the only thing he has been able to establish has been the split of Peru Libre, to give birth to the teachers’ bloc.
This is how it happens in Peru, even the most ambitious revolutionary plans end up failing due to the mediocrity of the villain and his stubborn ineptitude. And perhaps that same mediocrity coupled with a weak citizenry has led us into these stagnant waters. One year after the government of Pedro Castillo, that remains: a president incapable of building a popular base, a nominalist populist without a people who never had the attitude of Hugo Chávez or Rafael Correa and who did not even end up reaching Fernando Lugo or Manuel Zelaya. A regime that was frightening due to its outdated ideological creed and that has ended up becoming the Pantolandia of misrule, improvisation and rot. Not even the progressive archbishop of Lima supports him anymore and has insinuated that he should resign. This failure more does matter.
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